A Minaret for the Generals Wife
A Project by Erdem Tadelen
April 23 - July 31, 2022

Co-curated by: Julia Paoli, Director &
Curator, Mercer Union and Toleen Touq, Artistic
Director, South Asian Visual Arts Centre

Launch and Artist Talk on Sat, April 23 at 2pm.

The starting point for Erdem Tadelens exhibition is a little-known architectural oddity
located in the Lithuanian city of K-dainiai, approximately 120 km from the capital
Vilnius. Built in 1880 and restored in 2007, this structure is a freestanding Ottoman-
style minaret that peculiarly has no mosque below or attached to it, and currently sits in
K-dainiai Town Park in a former manor garden. Seized from its original owners after
the failed rebellion of 1863 against Russian rule, the manor was eventually handed
over to a Russian Army General named Eduard Totleben, who constructed the 28-
metre-tall minaret on the site.

Today, visitors can see the K-dainiai Minaret seated on a rectangular stone base with
distinguishing elements such as a sealed doorway, an exposed stairwell that ends
midair, and plaster replicas of two marble plaques. One of these
plaques features a text in Ottoman Turkish that describes a palace built by Sultan Mehmed II"a 15th-century Ottoman ruler"and the other an inscription from the Quran in Arabic that reads: Who is it that can intercede with Him save by His permission? Together, these plaques provide context for two prominent narratives regarding Totlebens construction of the minaret. The first is that the structure was erected as a monument in celebration of Russias victory in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877"78. The marble slabs that
originally adorned the base were brought from Ottoman land as war booty, hence the
description of an older palace on one of them. The General is said to have stored
various souvenirs in a small annex in the structure, which has since been destroyed.
The second, more romantic tale"which locals are said to consider fondly"is that
Totleben had a Turkish wife of Islamic faith for whom he built a mosque, of which only
an orphaned minaret remains today.

In A Minaret for the Generals Wife, the minaret becomes a metaphor for that peculiar and potent feeling of being corporeally out of place, for structures built in locations where they seemingly don’t belong, and for objects brought out of context in other
words; displacement, appropriation, and extractivism. In his search to uncover the
origins of the K-dainiai Minaret, Tadelen takes up these tensions through an array of
disparate and tangentially related materials, assembling miscellanea in a web of
relational and spatial collage. The resulting installation comprises archival documents,
replicas of artefacts, audiovisual material, a curious selection of objects and a book of
vignettes from undisclosed origins. Together, these elements expose and interrupt
connections that enable historical storytelling, and through this tension forge a place
wherein the artist elicits a multiplicity of readings.

At Richmond Art Gallery, Tadelen presents primary sources, translations and
fabulations referencing the K-dainiai Minaret in equal measure; compelling the viewer
to consider the confounding dichotomy between the authenticity of a material record
and the myriad truths spoken by subjective experience. By revealing and
simultaneously obscuring connections between the factual and the speculative,
Tadelen sets the stage for various scenarios that collapse reading and authoring at
the site of encounter. This gesture purposefully (re)constructs the minaret through a
constellation of artworks, where what is deemed poignant or valuable"by virtue of its
presence within the exhibition"is but an invitation to trouble the process of distillation
itself.

A Minaret for the Generals Wife was commissioned and organized by Mercer Union, a
centre for contemporary art and SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre), Toronto. The
exhibition is made possible with Leading Support from RBC Insurance and Support
from SAHA Association, Istanbul.

The exhibition launch and artist talk will be held on Saturday, April
23 at 2pm. Registration is required due to space restrictions. More information,
https://www.richmondartgallery.org/minaret

Gallery Hours
Monday to Friday 10:00am - 6:00pm
Sat & Sun: 12:00pm - 5:00pm

RICHMOND ART GALLERY
7700 Minoru Gate
Richmond, BC V6Y 1R9
Tel: 604.247.8300
Email: gallery@richmond.ca
www.richmondartgallery.org